December 31, 2010

I recently remembered the very short-lived Thank God You're Here. Bryan Cranston was hilarious in it, but that's no surprise. Sadly, I can't find the main skit he was in, but here's a promo.

I went looking for that episode and instead found out that there are both British and Australian versions. Of course they came first, and here's a taste.

Also, I discovered last night that Dan Byrd is the new Bryan Cranston. As soon as I saw him in Aliens in America I knew he'd be around for a while, and now he has Cougar Town. But he floored me in a scene in Easy A when he went from funny to heartbreaking in seconds. Ooh, the boy can act. Great movie, by the way. It was deeper and funnier than it looked in the commercials. The parents? Hilarious.

December 21, 2010

My father recently made the most ridiculously good cookies I've ever had. They're like cookie-cake-brownies. So soft, chewy, and chocolatey. And guess what? It starts with a devil's food cake mix. Wonder how it would be substituting different mixes. The super simple recipe is available at AllRecipes.com. Make it now. You won't regret it unless you have portion control issues. Then I'd suggest staying as far away from these as possible.

December 20, 2010

Of course, I'm four days late to the party since I'm not always scavenging the Internet for dirt on all my favorite shows. There's just no time. But that's what they should have given to SGU. No, I did not really like the show in the beginning, but I kept watching because it was tense, the acting was there, and I liked Eli. Since then it has definitely grown on me and now the characters whose personalities I hated in the beginning I now look forward to, because I know their motivations and back stories. Most of them are well-written, not cardboard cutouts. It shows how people would actually act in a survival situation: yes, at times selfishly.

I can't stand the Syfy brand. They should have renamed it years ago if it was so important to them. I really think they're trying to alienate every last one of their remaining viewers. New shows are given no support and are expected to soar, and when they don't they get axed. There never seems to be any bother to try to fix the problem, either with some actual advertising or maybe budget cuts or a new direction if a storyline is what's turning viewers away. They just seem to be making way for "reality" and wrestling. That's why they renamed the channel, so they could drop the pretense of being about science fiction. For years I've been waiting to see reruns of old scifi shows and movies, but those are very few and far between. Mostly we get Ice Spiders, Harpies (which actually made my jaw drop), and a myriad of other spectacularly terrible original movies.

I'm sick of this. I'm just about done with the channel. All that's left now, with the cancellation of Caprica, too (another show with great promise that was struggling to find its legs) are Haven; Sanctuary; and Eureka and Warehouse 13, which only have 10 to 12 episodes a year. I love all those shows, but I know they'll all be canceled before their time and usually on a cliffhanger.

How do you run a TV channel like that? All they do is slash programming. I don't see how they can survive with only a couple new episodes of original must-see programming on per week during any given half season. If they come up with more new concepts people won't flock to them in the droves Syfy's hoping for either, because their marketing division obviously has no idea what they're doing, and everyone knows they'll just be gone in a year or two.

I'm always coming across little, inconsequential coincidences in daily life. I find them fun, and sometimes funny, so I feel like sharing one with you that happened a few minutes ago. I had just finished my Billy's Bootcamp workout and hadn't put off the TV yet. Checking my pile of tapes (yup, still use tapes in combination with DVD recorders and a DVR) for an episode of Desperate Housewives, but my recently watched copy of Dark City was there and I flipped it over and read the back cover, which goes, "Together we can stop them. We can take the city back." Very shortly after I heard something like "Together we can take the city back" from Summer Glau in a commercial for The Cape.

December 6, 2010

Son of a...now I'm getting distracted by carpet removal. The one in my room is a decades old mess that's not even worth vacuuming anymore. Every day I think about tearing up a piece. I definitely don't want to continue to wait for when there's no work or set aside a day to do this specifically. That way I'll never get it done. I've had an allergy to something since this summer and this carpet has to be partly to blame. So out it goes.

I do general transcription for a part-time job (feels full-time, though), so every day I come across something new and unfamiliar, and I'm constantly going back and forth to Google. Just a few minutes ago I had to look up the spelling of a name and soon found myself looking for Irish boys names I like at BabyNamesCountry.com. I'm not even the motherly type (except to adorable animals), but I do love searching for that perfect name. I've always loved Aidan, but I hardly have ever been past the first couple of pages, so I went to the end and worked backwards. Found Tynan, which means dark. Ooh, I like that.

December 5, 2010

Christmas lights...sigh. How do those people with the insanely awesome displays do it? If you have 50 strands, 40 of them are guaranteed to be half out next season no matter how carefully you put them away. Then you try to fix them - checking for blown fuses, loose bulbs, loose sockets, and cut wires - usually wasting a good 20 minutes on each strand. It's a craptacular experience, and by the end your hands are cracked and bleeding. So we're slowly replacing the "old" (i.e. used once or twice) lights with the stupidly expensive LEDs, but at least we should be able to get some more use out of them.

December 4, 2010

I've had no faith in new cartoons for years. Anytime I see more than a few seconds I have an involuntary gut reaction to punch the creators. I figured that I just grew up. But I've always loved anything Pixar and many things Dreamworks, so that just never sat right with me. Then I discovered The Penguins of Madagascar last week. I loved Madagascar and knew the show had been on for a while; just never got around to it until recently. It restores my faith that there can be genuinely funny Saturday morning cartoons...if only once in a great, great while. Well, I know what's going on my Christmas list.

December 3, 2010

I have a ton of interests. One of the most amusing of them is Top Gear (the original UK version, but not the old one...you know, the awesome one with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May), so this seems like a perfect first post. Here's a new video in the off-season: Inside the Stig Farm. Hilarious as usual. I like the pink one.

By the way, I picked Season 10 for the link up there, instead of the most recent, because that's the one that has the epic trip to Africa. If you're gonna start anywhere it may as well be there. It should turn you into a fan for life. If you think it's a boring car show, you're wrong. Yes, there are cars and there is speed, but there are also three dry-witted Brits doing ill-advised stunts, often with spectacularly humorous results. See a recent example below.

While Fringe has taken over my life, I've also obsessed over Supernatural and Doctor Who. There are plenty of other shows I love, but let's leave it at these three for now. Here are the best sites I've found dedicated to them.

Supernatural

Television

T-Shirts

Content Copyright

Product images, screen captures, videos, and quotes are copyright of their respective owners. Other images and editorial content is owned by this site and may not be reproduced or redistributed without prior written permission. If I have posted something of yours and you would like it taken down, please contact Reinbeast@gmail.com.